Introduction
Since the start of the COVID‑19 pandemic, Canada’s financial institutions have allowed households to defer payments on a range of loans. Alongside government support programs, these payment deferrals have played an important role in helping households manage pandemic-related disruptions to their incomes. At the same time, the large take-up of payment deferrals has raised concerns that household defaults could spike once the deferral period ends.
In the following series of charts, we investigate what payment deferrals tell us about the financial health of households and the related risks to financial stability. We draw mainly on credit bureau microdata from TransUnion Canada. While our results are encouraging, it is still too early to reach any definitive conclusions because many deferrals remain active or have ended only recently. We plan to publish periodic updates to this analysis throughout the remainder of the pandemic.